Condensing groups

Condensing groups contain solo players whose music can be condensed onto the same staff or fewer staves and who are usually adjacent in the score. Condensing groups can contain up to 16 players.

Typically, players in condensing groups hold the same type of instrument. However, there are some common exceptions to this, for example, the trombone and tuba, which are different instruments but often share a staff in orchestral scores. Another example is horns, which are sometimes paired up in an interlocking fashion, that is, Horns 1 and 3 share a staff and Horns 2 and 4 share another.

Dorico Pro automatically creates condensing groups for adjacent solo players holding instruments of the same type with the same transposition. You can see these groups in the Condensing section of the Players page in Setup > Layout Options.

You can create custom condensing groups, for example, if you want to condense trumpets with different transpositions together. You can also specify groups that you do not want to condense, that is, groups whose players’ staves must always appear separately.

The condensing groups set up in each layout are then available in the Condensing Change dialog, allowing you to change options for those condensing groups from selected rhythmic positions onwards.